


Conversations Back To You

by wandering_gypsy_feet



Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, frank is too damn perfect, i would die for these two ok, karen does what she does best, kastle - Freeform, kastle centric, smut to come
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-13
Updated: 2018-04-27
Packaged: 2019-04-21 19:40:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 19,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14292000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wandering_gypsy_feet/pseuds/wandering_gypsy_feet
Summary: Karen Page wants nothing more than to find Frank Castle and wrap him in an embrace that doesn't end. She wants to protect him, help him, maybe even love him. But Frank Castle is not that kind of man. So Karen reaches out and tries to bring him back, through one person at a time. Because he deserves the after.One shot and then some, Kastle focused. The conversations that brings them back together.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hi so yes still very obsessed with these two. My take on the 'after' Karen talks about and how they might arrive there - because honestly as great as the ending of the show was, and as perfect as the elevator scene was, you cannot tell me that Karen does not want nothing more than to protect her soft murder bear. 
> 
> Ok, read on! Reviews are love, and sharing is caring.

**Ellison**

 

“Karen….” The way her boss says it, drawing it out almost languidly, makes Karen look up and frown slightly. He’s in the doorway, arms crossed and looking down at her. 

 

“What did I do now?” Karen asks him curiously. 

 

“Nothing, which is somehow all the more suspicious,” he informs her and Karen laughs despite herself. 

 

“What’s up?” She leans back and fiddles with her pen. Ellison sighs and steps inside her office, shutting the door behind him. Karen raises an eyebrow. This doesn’t usually happen unless she’s in serious shit or he has something to tell her that he doesn’t trust to the other reporters. 

 

“I have to ask you a question,” he says lowly and Karen eyes the closed door. 

 

“That serious, huh?” 

 

“Uh, yeah,” Ellison sits on the armchair of the shitty couch left behind by Ben. It’s shot to shit at this point, but some part of it screams ‘home’ to her and she can’t imagine a new one. “It’s regarding a, uh, friend of yours.” 

 

“Oh god,” she momentarily runs through the list of them. It’s short and doesn’t take long, but each one is uniquely capable of death and destruction in their own way, so she can’t single any one out. “Who’s hurt?” 

 

“Ah,” Ellison hesitates and Karen’s heart clenches in a painful sort of way. She fears for one name over everyone else, and she knows why. If it's him....

 

“Who?” She repeats and he puts a hand up. 

 

“No one’s dead Karen, so please don’t panic.” 

 

“Who?” Her voice is trembling. He doesn’t get to come in and tell her of all people not to panic. He doesn’t get to do that, not after all she’s been through. Not when the people she loves always….

 

“There was a shootout. Gangland violence, you know? Two gangs, couple of dead bodies, nothing out of the ordinary for our city right?” Ellison tries to sound offhand, but all it does is make anxiety's grip around her heart tighten. 

 

“Where?” The word comes out hollow, because this is so similar to the start of her nightmares that she presses the pen into her palm and wills herself to wake up. 

 

“The carousel,” Ellison tells her quietly and it is like a punch to the gut. It drives all the air out of Karen’s lungs and leaves her gasping. The pen falls from her hand and clatters to the ground, but she’s looking up at Ellison, trying and failing to keep the fear from weaving its tendrils around her throat, choking her. 

 

“Is… He….”

 

“I don’t know,” Ellison’s tone is calm, but his eyes are sad. He’s watching her with something like regret, like he understands the pain she feels. Karen, absurdly, wants to laugh because no one will ever understand this. No one else ever could. “But there’s something else.” 

 

“What?” Karen isn’t sure if she’s going going to break down in tears or vault the desk and go running for Central Park herself. It’s a toss up and it all depends on the next words from his mouth. 

 

“All the papers have been ordered not to report it as anything else. Orders from the top. From Homeland. From a Dinah Madani.” 

 

 _“Oh,”_ all of the breath whooshes out of Karen again, but this time it is less of a kick to her gut and more like a ray of sunshine straight to her heart. Madani. She is one of the good ones. She would be protecting him instead of endangering him. Karen stands, bumping her desk. “Listen, I gotta—”

 

“You’re not going anywhere,” Ellison orders as Karen shifts things on her desk, reaching for her bag, head spinning. She looks at him, half enraged that he would deny her this and half affronted that he thinks he can stop her. 

 

“Ellison, I have to go and—”

 

“You have to keep your ass here at this desk and write me the 1,000 words you owe me by tonight on the Tribeca robberies,” he commands and Karen nearly throws her purse at him. 

 

“Ellison, I cannot just stand by and—”

 

“Karen, listen to me,” he rises and puts his hands up. She glares at him, breathing heavily, furious. “You cannot, as a journalist, go see Dinah Madani. She was shot in the head. She’s in the hospital.” 

 

“Ok, so I’ll send her flowers first,” Karen bargains. “But I have to—”

 

“Are you listening to me?” Ellison shakes his head. “Karen, you can’t go there _as a journalist.”_

 

“I….” Karen trails off when she understands his meaning. He watches her, nodding slightly as she gets it.

 

“Yeah, like I said. We can’t report this. I’ve assigned Anderson to—”

 

“Anderson?” Karen can’t help but scoff. “Well, if you wanted someone who wouldn’t dig, boy did you pick the right guy.” 

 

“Hey,” Ellison points a finger at her. “Every office needs a grunt. Be glad he’s there so I don’t send you after the bullshit.” 

 

“Ok, fine, fair,” Karen relents. A ridiculous smile is curling up the corners of her mouth, though she’s doing absolutely everything she can to suppress it. 

 

“Do I have your word?” Ellison asks her pointedly and Karen glances up at him. She's too busy trying to remember what she needs to grab, what she could take with her, to may him much attention anymore. Her heart is pounding, like her blood is singing a tune and it's just one word, over and over again. _Frank, Frank, Frank, Frank, Frank...._

 

“Yeah, yeah, I promise.” 

 

“No, swear it,” he folds his arms. “Swear it to me.” 

 

“I, Karen Page, do solemnly swear that I will not approach Dinah Madani as a journalist of this paper,” Karen declares and Ellison’s eyes twinkle for a moment before he rises. 

 

“There, wasn’t so hard, was it?” He cracks his fingers. 

 

“And now you have plausible deniability if anyone comes asking,” Karen says quietly, shaking her head. She can’t get rid of this damned smile, not even if she wants to. 

 

“Covering my ass, Page,” Ellison opens the door. “You get me into some pretty deep shit sometimes.” 

 

“Sorry,” Karen tells him, clearly not. He chuckles, waves a hand, and disappears back into his office with the parting shot of,

 

“1,000 words Page, by 8pm tonight!” 

 

“Alright,” grinning, Karen closes her door and sits back down behind her computer, but she’s too giddy to work. She picks her pen back up and spins in her chair, feeling like laughing in delight. 

 

She has been on edge since the elevator. Her skin still carries the marks from Lewis, the scratches on her face and the deep bruises. But it her mind that has born the brunt of that day, her heart that was scarred deeply, her soul battered. 

 

Because that was the day she had been saved by Frank Castle for what was it, the hundredth time? The day she had so nearly had him. Had him in her arms, safe. God, he was bloody. So much blood. How had he not bled out a thousand times over? How much of his blood is smeared over the godforsaken city? 

 

She remembers his eyes best. There’s something about his eyes that break down every wall in her, blows past them. He doesn’t tear them down; he implodes them in a firestorm. She thinks about Matt’s eyes, shuttered and hidden away, and thinks of Frank’s. 

 

Wide open. Honest. Trusting. Astonished. Bewildered. Lost. Furious. 

 

His eyes are so dark that in some lights they come off as nearly black. But she isn’t scared of them. She’s seen them in the flickering, florescent light when they are brown and warm, looking at her like everything is going to be okay, like she is the reason why he is still standing. 

 

The last time she had seen him, he’d been so badly injured that she’d considered it a miracle that he’d gotten out at all. She’d wanted to say so much, thank him, apologize, scream, something. But instead all she’d had time to get out was ordering him to take her hostage and a short but intense fight about why he had to jam a gun up under her jaw. 

 

When they’d gotten to the elevator and he’d kicked it shut, they’d fallen apart, away from each other and Karen’s first instinct had been to put them back together. Or at least him. Even if there was no them, there was a him and he was her’s, in some way. 

 

Maybe it was the shock that made him look at her the way he had, but Karen knew better. He took bullets, he broke bones, dislocated shoulders, sheltered her from bombs. He might have been in shock, but he was coherent, he was there. 

 

And he had looked at her with such brokenness, such awe, such…. Something that was indescribable and heart wrenching. Like he was stunned she was still alive and so was he, and for a moment, he didn’t think about running or vengeance or being three steps ahead. He just looked at her with relief. 

 

She’d thought that was the moment. The moment where it was all going to end. Either fizzle out and end with not a bang but a whimper, or her world was going to explode for the second time in as many minutes. But it wasn’t, because he was still a man with a cause, a man with blood on his hands, and she was nothing if not understanding about a quest for vengeance and retribution. So he’d climbed out and she’d stayed.

 

In the following days, her heart felt like it’d been damaged more than her body ever could be. 

 

But now there’s hope. A wicked slice of hope, shrapnel that has driven itself deep into her being and is infecting her with wretched hope. If it’s Homeland, if it’s Dinah, if it’s the carousel, then it’s him. It has to be him. And maybe the bodies dropped and maybe it was him and maybe she is going to be more shattered than she was before. 

 

But maybe not. 

 

Her rational brain is ticking away, the reporter in her taking the facts, examining them, going through them and coming to a conclusion. 

 

_Homeland. Dinah. Carousel. Cover up. **Frank.**_

 

The 1,000 words fly out of her. She’s never written a story so quickly before. She pulls source quotes, she supports the facts, she makes sure none of her bias is seeping in, and when it is 7:11, she sends the article to Ellison and proofing, sitting back and grinning. 

 

Then she grabs her purse and her phone with hands that tremble, standing. She looks out over her office, covered in files and papers and random, useless junk. Her whole body is buzzing. Then she turns on her high heels and locks the door behind her. 

 

“You promised!” A vague yell comes from Ellison’s office and Karen actually laughs, a burst of joyful noise that she can’t keep contained, because this is the first moment of fleeting contentment she’s had in however many sleepless nights and too stressful days. She takes the stairs because elevators are still just a bit too raw, and when she hits the streets, she’s still laughing, little huffing breaths. 

 

There’s hope.  

  

* * *

 

**Dinah**

 

She agrees to see Karen in her hospital room. Karen stops by the flower shop and gets a bouquet of peach hydrangeas, wrapping them in a cream ribbon. On the little card she simply writes, _‘thank you’_ before taking a cab to the hospital.

 

Security is tight around Dinah, but Karen’s id and lack of a press pass gets her through, until she’s faced with nothing but a white door between her and the truth. For a brief moment, she has an intense flicker of fear that Frank really is going to be gone this time, the thought making her go cold from her head to her toes, but she pushes past it and into the hospital room.

 

“Karen Page,” Dinah greets her from the bed. Karen is glad that all of her time with Matt and clients and Frank, god most of all Frank, keeps her from gasping at the state Dinah’s in. Two dark rings around her eyes, a bandage on her head, monitors hooked to every finger. 

 

“I see I lack originality,” Karen remarks, hefting the flowers and giving her a smile in the hopes of breaking a little tension. Vases cover every surface of Dinah’s room that isn’t her bed itself. 

 

“Appreciated nonetheless,” Dinah states politely and Karen carefully arranges her flowers amongst the rest. The injured woman struggles to sit up, so Karen quickly goes to assist her. She thinks of a red line around a hospital bed and the way she’d crossed it. 

 

Always crossing lines with him, it seemed. 

 

“How are you?” Karen asks, once Dinah is sitting up a little straighter. 

 

“Off the record?” Dinah half jokes and Karen puts her hands up. 

 

“Everything is off the record, I swear. This isn’t for a story; in fact my editor forbade me from coming here as a journalist.” 

 

“Did he?” Dinah asks dryly and Karen smiles, appreciating that she is so smart, so sharp, that she can catch on faster than anyone Karen knows. 

 

“Yes, but I’m not the reporter. I’m just here as a friend now,” she assures her and Dinah actually chuckles. 

 

“I figured as much after your call. I knew you’d never let up if you heard about a gangland shooting at Central Park's carousel.”

 

“People might call for them to shut it down,” Karen says thoughtfully, thinking of the public and the tendency for humans to get upset over the wrong things. Never mind that the Punisher had a tragic story behind him that no common person would've survived. The soccer moms had a wrath that could be neither predicted nor diverted. 

 

“If we close down every place where there’s violence in this city, we might as well sink the whole island of Manhattan,” Dinah sighs, and Karen lets a sad smile twitch her lips at that. “What can I do for you then, Ms. Page?” 

 

“I just have one question,” Karen promises her and Dinah closes her eyes briefly, smiling slightly. 

 

“I thought you might. If I answer it, will you let me recover in peace?” 

 

“Yes, of course,” Karen sits down in the chair near the bed. “Did…. Did he….”

 

“Officially, Frank Castle is dead,” Dinah states, looking at Karen with her intelligent brown eyes. “The investigation into his family’s death ends with William Rawlins. Frank Castle is at peace.” 

 

“Ok,” Karen whispers, pressing a hand to her lips. They’re quivering and tears burn her eyes, but it’s not because of Dinah’s words. It’s because of the soft, tender look on her face that speaks the words she cannot say. 

 

She screams to Karen that Frank is alright, that he is alive, with her smile and her kind eyes without saying anything at all. 

 

“So now will you tell me what’s going on between you two?” Dinah asks pointedly and Karen laughs, throws her head back and laughs, relaxing in the chair as all the tension in her body leaks out. God, she should do yoga or something. 

 

“Nothing,” Karen whispers, grinning like a massive idiot at Dinah. “Nothing at all.” 

 

“Really?” Dinah smoothes down her blankets. “I don’t think it’s nothing Karen Page.” 

 

“Off the record?” Karen questions playfully and Dinah laughs. 

 

“I’m a federal agent. I don’t think I have an off the record button.” 

 

“As a friend then,” Karen suggests and Dinah smiles at her. They seem like friends. They seem like they’re going to be strange, weird friends, because they were stars that got swept up into the black hole of Frank Castle’s tragedy and yet still managed to come out the other side, changed but alright. 

 

“Okay, friends,” Dinah agrees slowly, like she’s reached the same conclusion as Karen. 

 

“I don’t know,” Karen confides, feeling as stupid and foolish as a teenager with her first crush. “All I know is that… Is that… There was something he said to me, when Lewis was going to bomb the senator.” 

 

“Was it before or after he jumped in front of a bullet for you?” Dinah questions and Karen’s heart skips a beat. How many times? Too many to repay. 

 

“After,” she whispers, fingers curling around her purse handle tightly. “After, when Lewis took me hostage. Had the switch, was getting ready to flip it. Frank, he, he, he looked at him and he said ‘I will come for you’. I’m sure Lewis thought he was threatening him, but I knew better. I did, because I knew him.” 

 

“He was talking to you,” Dinah realizes, her brow furrowing. Karen nodded, looking away from the astonishment on her face. The moment is still like a delicate little ball of light, like if she shares it she could damage it somehow, dim it a little. It's something that is still so purely them, so purely hers, that she's tucked it into herself to keep it safe and warm until she can give it back to Frank.

 

“He always comes back. He always does. I don’t know how that means and I don’t really care to figure it out right now but all I know is that…. As long as he keeps coming back, I will always…. I need to be here, you know?” 

 

“Yeah,” Dinah says quietly and when Karen raises her blue eyes to Dinah’s brown, there’s a sense of understanding in the look she gives her. “If I tell you what happened, will you promise me that you will never tell it? Never go beyond what’s going in the reports, in the papers?”

 

“Yes, of course,” Karen promises and means it utterly and truly. All of this is being covered up isn't to hide a wrong, it’s to do something right. It’s to give someone another chance. It’s for him and it’s for her and maybe, just maybe, one day it’ll have been for them. 

 

Dinah tells her the whole story. Karen senses that she’s leaving parts out, giving her just a broad overview of the events that converged on that night in the park. For the most part, she is strictly logical, but when she says a name, her voice catches and breaks, just half a heartbeat. Billy Russo. 

 

Karen reaches out and takes her hand and for a second Dinah looks so shocked, but then Karen gives her a watery smile and Dinah breaks. She talks about what he’d done, about who he was, what he hid. She talks about his wrongs and Karen listens sympathetically. Then Dinah takes a deep breath to stop her tears and gives Karen a smile that is half envy and half relief. 

 

“Yours though… He isn’t like that. He’s… Honest.” 

 

“Yeah, honest,” Karen whispers, thinking of the diner and the lies and that moment in the office when Matt had pulled a red, horned helmet from a bag and offered it to her like he had picked her up a sub sandwich. Honesty. She’s always known Frank, but does he know her? 

 

“Listen,” Dinah leans back against the hospital bed like she’s exhausted and Karen squeezes her hand and then lets it go to gather her things. She shouldn’t take up too much of Dinah’s recovery time. “Karen, listen to me.” 

 

“What?” Karen stops by her bedside, looking down. Up close, the bruises look even worse, the gunshot even more horrific, but Dinah radiates a quiet strength. 

 

“I don’t…. I don’t know where he is.” 

 

“I know,” Karen says quietly, resting a hand on Dinah’s shoulder. 

 

“I told him that the next time we saw each other, only one walked away alive.” 

 

“He seems to inspire that in people,” Karen sighs, a smile tugging at her lips despite herself. “Dinah, all that you’ve told me, I….” 

 

“Don’t say thank you,” Dinah shakes her head. “God, don’t. You’ve been some through some awful shit, a large chunk of it my fault, and you’re going to say thank you?” 

 

“For the thing you gave back to me then,” Karen bobs her head so her hair slides in front of her face and Dinah gives a weary little wheeze of a laugh. 

 

“Going to find him?” She asks, as Karen gathers up her things and makes sure Dinah is comfy. 

 

“Something like that,” Karen says, smiling, paused beside the door. “I think I have a good idea of who I’m going to go to next.” 

 

“Wait,” Dinah is frowning, brow furrowed. “You mean, he won’t just…. I mean, you said he’d come for you.” 

 

“I know,” Karen’s fingers close around the steel door handle. “But this time I think he deserves to have someone come for him.” 

  

* * *

 

**Micro**

 

“There she is,” David says quietly when she slides into the booth across from him. She gives him a bright and ready smile; he likes to grab coffee from this little shop after he’s dropped his kids off at school, so when Karen had reached out, she’d accepted his invitation here. 

 

“Hi David,” she smiles and takes the lid off her coffee to let some steam escape. “How are you?” 

 

“Adjusting,” he admits after a long pause and Karen gives him a tiny, reassuring smile. 

 

“And the kids?” 

 

“Adjusting,” he repeats, with a faint smile in return. “Thrilled to have me back, then pissed I was gone, then they don’t want me out of their sight, then they refuse to speak to me. It varies by the minute.” 

 

“Bet you can’t wait till they’re both teenagers,” Karen teases and he laughs, rubbing his face. He’s trimmed back his hair and most of his beard, but the evidence of his time away shows in the tiredness around his eyes. 

 

“Might need to dip out again,” he mumbles, a joke that clearly doesn’t sit well with him. Karen takes a sip of coffee to give him a moment before reaching out and touching his forearm. 

 

“Thanks for meeting me,” she says gently. “I really appreciate it. And for, for all the rest, I mean, I could never….” 

 

“Don’t worry about it,” he waves a hand, sitting back. “We both needed each other.” 

 

“Yeah, I get that, but the rest?” Karen tilted her head. “I know you protected me David, I know what you did for him. That means something. Thank you.” 

 

“It’s nothing,” he’s clearly uncomfortable with her gratitude so she eases up.

 

“Well, um, that isn’t the only reason I asked to chat,” she admits, grabbing her coffee with both hands. He looks at her and raises an eyebrow. 

 

“Hoping I’ll do a tell all?” 

 

“Why does everyone think that’s all I’m after?” Karen wonders and for the first time, David actually looks amused. “You, Madani, even my editor.” 

 

“You talked to Madani?” That clearly surprises him. He leans forward, elbows on the table, eyebrows raised. 

 

“I did,” Karen confirms, taking another sip of coffee. “I, uh, wanted to make sure that everything that happened in the park was…. Resolved.” 

 

“I think as resolved as it can be,” David says carefully, as the coffee shop around them bustles with people. “Always a shame when there’s random acts of violence.” 

 

“It is,” Karen nods along, as an old lady shuffles past them with her tea. 

 

“You know,” David says, looking down into his coffee. “Seems the way I remember it, you have some flowers in your apartment.” 

 

“I have lots of flowers,” Karen replies, thinking about certain white flowers. Fake, she’d realized when she absentmindedly went to water them one day. She doesn’t let herself wonder if there’ll ever be a chance for real ones, one day. 

 

“And lots of windows,” he says pointedly. Karen gives a little shrug, pushing her hair off her neck. 

 

“How much do you know about me?” She asks him, changing tracks and he frowns a little but goes with it. 

 

“A fair bit.” 

 

“And you know how many times he has saved my life?” 

 

“Several times, yes,” David says slowly, watching her. 

 

“Enough times that when I close my eyes at night, sometimes the only thing that gets me to fall asleep is knowing that he would do it again, be there again, in a heartbeat,” she tells him, her voice quiet but urgent. David is watching her carefully, silently, one finger tapping his coffee cup like he can’t stay still. “He has given me my life, over and over again, so for me to selfishly demand that he come to me, before he is ready? I will not do that to him.” 

 

“Alright,” David says, nodding along. “Alright, I get that. That’s…. Kind of you.” 

 

“Well,” Karen looks away, trying to calm herself down, even as her hands shake slightly. She brings the coffee to her lips while David watches. “Knowing he’s alive is enough.” 

 

“Did he reach out to you?” David asks, quiet but curious. 

 

“No, not after that….” Karen trails off. After the elevator would be too strange of wording. David would instantly catch up on the oddness of that turn of phrase, question what exactly she means by that. So she settles for a half truth. “Not after he escaped Lewis.” 

 

“Mhmm,” David nods, eyes half closed. “But you were safe?” 

 

“Yeah, I was,” Karen tells him, thinking of her little apartment and the way she had sat in the tub that night, hands gripping the sides as she sobbed so hard she thought her chest would crack in two. 

 

“And then he went after Rawlins,” David says, more to himself than to her and Karen’s gut twists. 

 

“David, I don’t… I don’t mean to pry, but no one….” Karen hesitates, nails digging into the soft side of the cup. “No one told me what happened after.” 

 

“Not good,” he states, not raising his eyes to her. Karen nearly laughs; it would be absurd to think of anything going good with Frank, but the look in David’s eyes makes her think that this had been a special sort of bad, even by Frank’s standards. 

 

“Not good what?” She demands, grip tightening on the coffee. “How bad?” 

 

“There was a moment,” David admits quietly, “that I don’t think any of us expected him to come back from.” 

 

“Was he…. Hurt?” The world seems to burn her lips on the way out. Frank has killed what has to be hundreds by now, and not all through the scope of a rifle, far and removed. There isn’t anything that Frank won’t come back from doing anymore she thinks, so this much by something that was done to him. 

 

“Dead, actually,” David says, in a voice that is just a little too casual for her when his words are too serious. The very picture of what he means roots her to the seat; the coffee shop could've been picked up by aliens then and there and still Karen wouldn't have been able to move an inch, because he was implying that Frank had died. “Yeah, I, uh, I knew going in that he’d gotten himself into some deep shit and you know how, he wouldn’t ever give this shit up but it got, it got deep even for him and when we got there, when we got him out Karen, it didn’t…. He wasn’t…. Bad.”

 

“How bad?” She demands and David looks away. “How bad? How close was I to losing— losing him? David, please….”

 

“He got out, okay?” David looks away and finishes off his coffee. “He got out, that’s all that matters, isn’t it?”

 

“Then what?” Karen pushes her fear to the side, sets it aside for later, when she can examine it at length and try not to scream herself hoarse in the shower. “Then what did he do?”

 

“He did what he does best,” David’s gaze flickers to hers and is gone again. A muscle in his jaw ticks before he sighs. “They’re gone Karen, each and every one of them. Rawlins, in a way that I hope to God I will never see again in my lifetime.”

 

“And Billy Russo?” She points out and his eyes narrow as he catches her look. “Madani, remember?”

 

“Well he’s done too,” David shakes his head. “You don’t get to put that in your nice little papers do you?”

 

“Not by a long shot,” Karen sighs, swirling her coffee around.

 

“And you’re okay with that?” David raises an eyebrow. “You’re fine with a story getting buried under it all? Not your way Karen.”

 

“This protects him,” Karen rationalizes. “This means that wherever he is, whatever he’s going, he has a chance to do it on his own. When he came back, when he found me, do you know what I told him?”

 

“What?” David’s eyes are sad.

 

“I said I wanted there to be an after. And after everything that he’s gone through, once he's had a chance to maybe, possibly get through it all, he deserves an after. He gets to heal, do it his way. He deserves this more than any man— any person I know,” Karen takes a deep breath. “I’ll do whatever I have to do to keep him safe.”

 

“That’s what you two do for each other it seems,” David is watching her closely.

 

“Yeah, maybe,” Karen trails off, lost in thought. So often it seems like Frank is the one protecting her. Stepping in front of bullets and bad men and bombs for her. Taking the hurt that would otherwise be her. She'd thought, before this had all happened, that all she could offer Frank was the chance to tell his story. To use words to give him some form of his life back, but Frank didn't want words. He wanted justice, and Karen was so sure that she was only going to hinder that if she ever dared tried to be the one to step in front of him. But now, she's not sure if there isn't anything she won't do to show Frank Castle that she's willing to watch over him like he does for her. David doesn’t pull her from her thoughts until her coffee is gone.

 

“So why did you want to talk to me?” He asks her finally and Karen looks up with a little smile.

 

“I needed to ask you for something,” she admits, her voice nearly silent. “I want…. I want to see it.”

 

“See what Karen?” He looks at her like he already knows.

 

“Listen, if I get to talk to him after this, in this after—” she waves her hands, “-- then I need to know what he has been through. I need to see it. That’s…. That’s only fair.”

 

“Karen, you gotta trust me when I say that this is something you do not want to see,” he warns her, but Karen simply outstretches her hand.

 

“I know you have it,” she tells him flatly. “I know you have it, I want to see it. Show me. I need to see it David.”

 

“Don’t have the sound on,” he mutters then hands over a slim and compact device. Karen unlocks it and finds the video. She knows David saves back ups of everything, that’s who he is, that’s why he does what he does. She glances up at him, but he won’t meet her eyes, so she presses play.

 

For a first couple moments, it’s her heart that hurts the worst. She gasps to see Frank, her Frank, taking such a beating. He’s strong, god does she know how strong he is. But then her own body seems to ache for him - this is brutal. This is unlike anything she’s ever seen before. She jumps with each blow but there’s nothing she can do. Tears in her eyes blur her vision and by the time the screen goes black, she doesn’t seem Frank’s limp and gruesome body. She’s crying, letting the tears splatter onto the table, and David gently takes the phone, covering her hand with his.

 

“And he…. He survived that?” She whispers, hand over her mouth in horror. “How?”

 

“He doesn’t die easy,” he says quietly.

 

“He doesn’t die at all,” Karen gives what she means to be a chuckle but it’s far from it. “Then after, what…. What came after?”

 

“You already know,” David says softly. “You talked to Dinah, didn’t you? You already know what happened at the park. She tell you that Russo is dead?”

 

“No, just that he might never wake up,” Karen responds and cannot bring herself to have remorse for Billy Russo. Another of Frank’s little family, of the few people in the world, that turned on him, on everything he held dear. That pain must kill him, tear him up inside and Karen wants nothing more than to help, to help soothe it for a moment. “I don’t need to know any more. I just need to know that it’s over.”

 

“That part is,” David says and Karen could hug him for his honesty. “But he’s never going to be done, you know that right?”

 

“I do,” Karen confirms and David blinks twice.

 

“And you know that and what, you don’t…. Care?”

 

“I care,” Karen says, without much conviction. “But that’s who he is, I knew that, I mean, I know this, it doesn’t change. He doesn’t change. I just…” She sighs deeply.

 

“You just what?” David presses gently and Karen gives him a shaky smile.

 

“I just wanted there to be an after,” she mummers and David’s smile sad, but the corners of his eyes are soft, kind.

 

“For you or for him?”

 

“Them,” she whispers, thinking of her earlier thoughts and if David thinks she’s nutty, he doesn’t say anything. He waits until she looks up at gives him another nod.

 

“Is there anything else then?” He asks, as she wipes tears from her cheeks.

 

“No, no, this is, it’s, yeah, thank you,” Karen rubs her arms as if to brace herself. “Thanks David.”

 

“Are you going to go after him now?” David questions, as Karen gathers up the trash.

 

“No,” she knows her words are true. She knows she won’t go to him, not yet. He gets to come to her. She owes him that much, always. “No, when he’s ready he’ll come to me.”

 

“And if he doesn’t?” David asks, as she rises and gathers her things.

 

“Then I can live my life knowing that at least he’s not dead,” she replies and David looks understanding. She’s almost out the door when he speaks again.

 

“Hey, Karen?” She turns to look at him. “There’s, uh, a guy. Curtis. Curtis Hoyle. You want to go say hi to everyone, you might want to stop in and check on him.”

 

“Alright,” Karen’s smile grows. “Thanks David. I’ll, uh, see you around some time?”

 

“Yeah, coffee is…. Nice,” he admits and Karen gives him a little wave before heading back out into the street.

 

* * *

  

**Curtis**

 

“Karen Page,” the way Curtis drags out her name, making it more syllables than it needs to be, has the ability to pull out her smile. He’s standing in an empty room, chairs in a loose, messy circle. A fresh pot of coffee is brewing, filling the room with the rich, warm smell.

 

“I see my reputation proceeds me,” she walks forward and reaches a hand out. 

 

“Something like that,” Curtis has an easy smile when he shakes her hand but she doesn’t miss the way his eyes sweep her up and down, nothing longer than a flicker. “You, uh, want some coffee?” 

 

“No, thank you,” Karen says graciously, waving a hand. “I won’t be in your hair that long, but thank you for offering.” 

 

“Sure, sure. Sit?” He offers her a pick of the rickety folding chairs and Karen sinks down into one. Curtis takes one near her, his prosthetic leg extended out in front of him.

 

“I imagine you know why I’m here,” she remarks and he laughs, nodding and folding his arms, leaning back. 

 

“Yeah, I’d imagine I do too,” he agrees easily. The way his eyes crinkle when he laughs is endearing, and Karen wonders if she’ll ever see Frank with such an expression. “Heard a lot about you, Karen Page.” 

 

“I apologize that I can’t say the same about you,” Karen tells him and Curtis shrugs, sucking part of his lip in before he gives her a knowing look. 

 

“Who wants to talk about an old cripple when they could talk about a pretty, young reporter like you?” He points out and Karen blushes, ducking her head. 

 

“Thank you,” she says quietly. “I just mean, our conversations didn’t exactly, uh, revolve around chatting about old friends, you know?” 

 

“What did they revolve around?” Curtis leans forward, elbows on his knees, dark eyes on hers and his tone has shifted. More into the therapist than the friend, but Karen doesn’t mind. It feels good to talk about this to someone who understands, who she doesn’t have to speak in half truths and little lies. 

 

“Keeping him alive, mostly,” Karen gives a weak little chuckle and a halfhearted shrug. “Or me. It was more identifying who was most likely going to kill us and then how to stop it.” 

 

“Sounds like a battleground,” Curtis says knowingly and Karen raises her eyes to his.

 

“Isn’t it always with him?” 

 

“Wasn’t, once,” he says guardedly, watching her slowly. “That why you’re here, Karen? Want to talk about the before? About the past?” 

 

“No,” Karen admits, looking down at her hands. She thinks of that night when she’d crept through his house, through his home. Saw the drawings, the trophies, the toys. The photos, all the photos, and the little room with the wooden letters spelling out _‘Lisa’_ for a girl that was on the cusp of becoming a young woman. 

 

“Then why?” Curtis presses her. 

 

“I just want to make sure he’s okay,” it’s an admission she keeps close to her chest, revealing her hand slowly. 

 

“You planning on waiting for him here?” 

 

“No,” Karen says instantly. “No, god, no. No. I don’t get to make that call. I decided a long time ago that whatever comes next, it’s on him. I just…. I don’t want to do it before he’s ready, but I needed to know. I needed to check on him.” 

 

“He’s okay,” Curtis says cautiously. “He’s working on it. We’re all working on it.” 

 

“Good,” Karen nods and leans back, rubbing her palms on her knees. “Good. Okay, that’s good. He’s not…. Hurt?” 

 

“What do you think?” He narrows his eyes at her and Karen exhales, hard, hiding back a smile. 

 

“Okay, fine, that’s fair. I just, I saw something. I saw him and, you know, he was pretty bad and….” Her hands are shaking again and Curtis reaches for them without seemingly thinking about. Karen doesn’t pull away; she likes the contact. It’s nice, his warm, rough hands around hers. 

 

“I bet he was,” he says lowly and it takes a couple breathes before Karen can speak again. 

 

“I’m just going around and making…. Making sure that there’s nothing he needs, nothing that I can do.”

 

“I think, if you asked him, he’d say you’d done enough, or more than enough for his sake,” Curtis remarks and Karen scoffs, pulling her hands away. 

 

“I’ve made that man jump in front of how many bullets for me? I’ve caused just about as much pain as the rest. All I’ve done is make him put his life on the line for me, over and over again. I think I can repay him with some space for…. For whenever he’s ready again. That’s fair. That’s only fair,” she says adamantly. 

 

“You’re interesting, you know that?” Curtis leans back, shifting so both his feet are flat on the floor. 

 

“I, uh…. Thank you?” Karen replies, a little bewildered. 

 

“Yeah, nothing like Maria,” he carries on and a hot fist of anger is clenched around her heart but Karen forces her face into impassiveness. She doesn’t want to be compared to Frank’s wife. She doesn’t deserve that honor. She's not on Maria's level and she's not sure she ever wants to be, but this is unfair to the memory of the woman Frank loved so much. “She was all bulldozer. Fuck, when Frank was being a stubborn asshole, you know the way he is, she’d come in like a wrecking ball. No way to stop her. She’d rock his shit, wham. Complete devastation.” 

 

“Well that’s not me,” Karen says quietly. 

 

“Nah, you’re not her,” Curtis has dark, knowing eyes. “You wanna try to be her?” 

 

“Maria Castle is dead,” Karen says carefully, knowing where he’s treading. She'd do the same for any friend who'd lost someone and tried to rebuild. “And that is a tragedy of unspeakable proportions. I would never, ever try to replace that. Frank, he and I haven’t ever—” she cuts herself off when she thinks about the elevator. 

 

They weren’t anything. They hadn’t done anything, truly. All that had passed between them was understanding. Karen had thought for a wild split second that Frank was going to kiss her in the moment, but then he’d just leaned his forehead against her, slumped. Somehow that felt all the more intimate. He'd rested for a moment, trusted her enough that he'd let his guard down completely. Like she would take care of him. But then the moment was gone again. 

 

“You want there to be something?” Curtis asks her, bluntly and Karen is a little breathless. 

 

_Why do you care so much about Frank Castle? You two have a connection. Why was he even here? You think that this Punisher could be a good person?_

 

**_I will come for you._ **

 

“I don’t know,” she’s speaking before she can even control it, her mind curiously running and yet still blank. Useless in this moment to start talking, but she’s not noted for her control. “I don’t know. I just want him to be okay, and I don’t want to press him.”

 

“He ever tell you about his kids?” Curtis switches track so quickly Karen has to blink several times before she can answer. 

 

“Uh, yeah. Um, Lisa, and Frank Jr. Frankie,” she responds, thinking of a house that is only rubble now. What did he take from it? Anything? Or somewhere amongst the ash will she find a little race car, some melted dinosaurs? “Yeah, he talks about them a little here and there. When it’s not too much.” 

 

“Yeah? Curtis raises an eyebrow. “And you? What do you think about them?” 

 

“I think that if I was Frank and I lost two kids like that, I never…. I never would’ve gotten back up,” she mutters, trying to stop the tears. For a second Curtis looks like he might reach for her, then he stops himself. 

 

“You want kids?” He asks and Karen freezes, thinking absurdly, of her own family. Her own mother, father, brother. Her throat starts to close, her heart starts to flutter, the tears start to come, but she gasps and slams that door in her head shut so that she can raise her gaze to Curtis, pretending it is only her sadness and anger at the senseless murder of the Castle children that is why she's trying not to scream and sob all at once. 

 

“Why are you asking?” 

 

“I believe you are a good person, Karen,” Curtis tells her calmly. “And I believe that you don’t have any illusions about the man he is. But I knew Maria, I knew those kids. And I wanted to make sure that no one will ever try to hide or get rid of their memory.” 

 

“Oh my god,” Karen nearly stands, she’s so filled with disgust at the idea. “No, no, no. No! Never. Those were his kids, his…. They deserve to be remembered, they can’t…. They were good. No one should ever try to hide that memory.” 

 

“I’ve seen a lot of my friends get killed overseas,” he tells her, touching her elbow to ground her. “After a couple years, the widow remarries and then what? You pretend no one was ever there? You get jealous of a ghost? You hold that grief against them, that longing and loneliness and that what if’s, the maybes? Maria was a good woman, Karen, and I want to make sure that you won’t try to make Frank forget her memory because you want to come first.” 

 

Silence follows his declaration as Karen struggles to understand. The way he is talking, the way he mentions Maria and widows and dead spouses, it all seems like he’s implying that she wants to take that role in Frank’s life. More alarmingly so, that Curtis sees her moving into that space of Frank’s life. 

 

“I don’t…. I don’t….” She whispers through numb lips, but that’s the point of all this, isn’t it? She does want. She wants Frank. She’d settle for just seeing him, alive and whole and not so driven by wild grief that he tears a city down around them, but is that all? All she wants? Or does she want more? 

 

Fresh flowers. A smile, a true smile. Two bodies between the sheets, moving softly and slowly and achingly tender. Breakfast with sunshine and lemonade and some laughter. A kiss to battered and bruised knuckles and truth, pure, unfiltered truth. Someone that knows her. 

 

“Don’t think too much about it,” Curtis claps her shoulder and rises. “Sorry if that was a bit much. I just like to vet the people in his life, you know? After all of this.” 

 

“Yeah, no,” Karen shakes her head, trying to clear it of thoughts that seem too soft. “No, I get that.” 

 

“Can I tell you something Karen?” Curtis requests softly, as he pours himself a cup of coffee. Karen almost asks for one, to give her hands something to do, but she stops herself. She’ll need sleep tonight. 

 

“Yeah, of course.” 

 

“I think you’re brave,” he states and Karen is ready with her usual reply, that’s it’s not so much bravery as it is sheer force of will, but Curtis carries on. “Most people couldn’t go toe to toe with Frank Castle even before he was the Punisher. New guys in our unit were terrified of him. Big guy, with a face like that? Nah. Easier to talk to me or fucking Russo, piece of shit.

 

“Maria could. She’d go toe to toe with him any day of the week, no fear, no hesitation. And he'd let her get away with more than anyone else every could, if only to a certain point. Those two could have some fights, you bet your ass they could. But when she died, when the kids were gone? I saw the man on the news and I thought there was no way in hell there was anyone left on God's green earth who’d be able to get through to that man. Frank Castle as I knew him was dead and gone, and I would never see him again.

 

“But then there’s you, Karen Page. Then came you. And if you’re half of what he tells me, you can throw his ass back in the dirt, all 100 pounds of you, just as easily as he could kick yours. And I see this man he is now Karen, this person that he's been forced to adapt to and I honestly don’t know if even Maria could love the man that he’s become. But you?” 

 

“Why are you telling me this?” Karen’s voice is nothing more than a hoarse whisper; she can’t be compared to his wife and have the word love bantered around so easily. Her soul is still a wide open ache, and these are mortar shells. 

 

“Because, Karen, I loved her, I loved those kids, and I love Frank,” he declares, eyes affixed firmly with hers. “I want to protect their memory and my best friend. Because if there’s a soul in this world that can help him, I want him to hang on to that. I want him to have a rock, a hand hold, something to help him up out of this hole. And I gotta make sure you’re steady.” 

 

“Two hands, don’t let go,” Karen whispers, more to herself than anyone and Curtis looks at her quizzically but she doesn’t want to explain that. That’s too personal, that belongs to only them. “Curtis, I…. Thank you.” 

 

“No, thank you,” He leans against the window sill and Karen rises. “You’ve done a lot.” 

 

“I hope I get the chance to do a little more,” she remarks, with a little laugh. 

 

“I think you will,” Curtis has a little smirk, but he manages to hide it well. “Still not gonna stay?”

 

“Uh, no,” Karen brushes some dust off her pencil skirt. “I meant it. I want him to have some time.” 

 

“You want me to tell him you stopped by?” He gives her a look, one that seems to know just a little too much, and Karen smiles because she’s not sure anyone knows any part of this, except them. Her and Frank. 

 

“Up to you,” she decides. “You’re his keeper.” 

 

“Oh, hell no,” Curtis laughs. “That’s been you Karen Page, since you broke into his house.” 

 

“He, uh, told you about that?” Karen flinches slightly. Not a moment she regrets, but maybe not a moment she’s most proud of. 

 

“Told you, it’s more fun talking about you than me,” Curtis teases and Karen gives him a sheepish grin before he walks her to the door. She lingers, half convinced that she should stay. She should wait for him, just to see. Just to reassure herself that he’s coming back after all. That he’s still standing. 

 

“Thank you,” she tells Curtis instead, extending her hand again. “Thank you, for everything.” 

 

“Don’t gotta thank me,” Curtis shakes her hand with two of his, one clasped over the top. “Think a lot of thanks is owed to you.” 

 

“Yeah, well,” Karen brushes it off with a shrug and curls her hair back behind her ear, looking up at Curtis. He’s got a funny expression, something stuck between apprehension and approval. At least, she hopes that’s what it is. “Still.” 

 

“I think I’ll see you around, Karen Page,” he nods with his words, before he lets her hand go and goes back to setting up the chairs, whistling. Karen departs before she want to stay so badly she does, and ducks into a little bodega to catch her breath and compose herself. When she’s certain that she’s not going to turn around and run back to Frank, she grabs a bagel for a snack and goes home. 

 

She looks at the pot of flowers, on her coffee table, stares them down as she munches on the bagel. She could put them in the window. She could see if he would come, though she already knows that answer in the depths of her being. But she’s promised half the city of New York that she won’t, that she’ll leave it up to him, that she won’t push until he’s ready, so she leaves them on the coffee table.

 

Maybe she should get flowers for his window. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HI OK I KNOW THIS IS ALMOST A WEEK LATE BUT IT IS LITERALLY DOUBLE THE LENGTH I INTENDED IT TO BE SO FORGIVE ME? 
> 
> A couple notes - this is influenced by the amazing Kastle fandom on tumblr - i'm raginglittlehurricane on there so if you want to see all the wonderful gifs and edits and videos that inspired this fic, come find me!
> 
> Karen's past is intentionally vague. I've got another fic coming up that will explore it more in depth, but right now I cannot pin down what they're going to do with it, so I've put in some head canons of my own and rolled with it. 
> 
> There is smut ahead. Read at your own caution. 
> 
> Writing this couple is hard as hell because they're so perfect, so reviews are so beloved. Seriously just like highlight your favorite line as you read and drop it in a review for me when you're done. Catnip to writers. 
> 
> Please enjoy and apologies for my delay!!!

**Frank**

 

Karen had told herself she was willing to wait weeks, if not months, for Frank. She had imagined herself contented with the knowledge that he was safe and well. She had been so sure that she would be able to give him space, to heal and grieve, without interrupting. 

 

Except it’s been three weeks and she is going to lose her mind. It had only taken four days for her to crack and demand that Ellison put her on a story, a real story with substance. She had needed something to pour all her obsessive worry into. Which is how she winds up spending her Saturday morning and early afternoon at the library hunting down blueprints of a speakeasy set to be demolished. 

 

She ends up starving by 3:45, so she decides to pack everything up and head home, carrying with her several books on gangsters, crime in New York, early 1900’s building codes, and women’s fashion. She lets herself into her apartment building, stomach rumbling. She unlocks her door, trying in vain to recall what she might have in the fridge, when she freezes. 

 

Someone is in her kitchen, pats and pans clattering, whistling. Karen has a wild thought that perhaps she’s let herself in the wrong apartment, but this is her home. It’s her place, without a doubt, and nothing seems to be out of the ordinary, except for the cooking going on. It smells delicious, roasted garlic and warm bread, but she doesn’t have friends or family who’d even be in her apartment on a Saturday afternoon, never mind actually baking for her. 

 

She drops the books so that she can reach for her gun when she recognizes the tune. Her gaze darts to the windowsill, where the flowers are placed off to the side. She’d put them there one morning, when she couldn’t handle the radio silence anymore. Not front and center, but off to the edge, just a rose or two peaking out into the street. Tentative. _I’m ready if you are._

 

“Found I had to stand alone…. Bless it now I've got my own….” Someone sings quietly and Karen gasps, stumbling into the wall, her bag clattering to the ground forgotten. She wants to run towards the kitchen but it doesn’t seem like any of her muscles are working. Her body won’t obey, so she can only watch in some sort of unfathomable relief as the form of Frank Castle walks into view, holding a spatula with a smirk. 

 

“Oh….” Her breath is snatched away from her and her heart stops its rhythm completely when he quirks an eyebrow and looks her up and down. 

 

“Don’t shoot me ma’am. I kinda got this streak going; like to keep it up.” 

 

“Oh!” Abruptly, her mind manages to send the signal to her legs that she wants to go, move now, and she’s launched forward, closing the distance between them more quickly than she’d thought herself possible. 

 

Frank seems ready for her; like he’s learned that she needs to feel tangible evidence that he’s okay. His arms are wide and when she flies into them, hitting him hard, he just wraps them around her and holds her upright and steady, swaying slightly with the impact. Karen clutches him, heart thudding so painfully against her ribs that she fears he’ll feel it.

 

“Hey,” he mummers, one giant hand sliding across her back, pressing her closer to him. She breathes him in and then out again, shuddering little choking gasps that are forced out of her by the fissure in her soul mending, coming back together. Completed. Frank turns his face into her temple and leans forward. She’s so vividly brought back to the elevator it nearly makes her collapse. 

 

She grips him tighter, trying to get more and more of him closer to her so that she can be reassured that’s he actually there. One hand comes up to cradle her head and this time it’s him dragging her closer, like he craves her touch just as much as she desires him. She thinks she might sink into his warmth, his smell of the outdoors and something headier, muskier. It’s him, it’s them, it’s…. 

 

Then she pulls back, reeling. She always does this, with him. She doesn’t overstep boundaries; she burns past them and kicks up dust in her wake. She’s a liar and she can’t ever keep her promises, but she wants to. She wants to be as patient with him as he deserves, but her emotions can’t seem to pick a side. She drags herself away and shoves his chest, hard. 

 

“What the _fuck_ , Frank?” 

 

He’s wearing a thick cotton shirt, a dark heather grey. There’s three little buttons at the top, two undone around his throat, and the sleeves rolled up. He’s wearing dark black jeans, but now that she’s coherent enough, past the shock, she sees the black boots he’s kicked off at the door like some good and proper houseguest that didn’t break into her apartment. His black coat is even hung nicely on a hook. She turns to him, eyes wide and jaw slack, but he’s already back in the kitchen. 

 

“Garlic bread is gonna burn,” he says, like that’s going to explain why he’s in her apartment like the picture of domestic bliss. Karen is left standing in the middle of living room, like an unmoored ship, drifting. Then, when a pan clatters on the stovetop, she gets her senses back. 

 

“How the hell—” 

 

“C’mon Karen,” even with his back to her, she can just see that little smirk on his face and she’s not sure if it infuriates or delights her. “Think that I can’t get in through the goddamn window?” 

 

“I don’t think you should be able to, no,” Karen folds her arms and Frank chuckles.

 

“Don’t worry. If it makes you nervous, I’ll make it so secure even I can’t get in.” 

 

“I….” Karen snatches a pillow from the couch and throws it at him, hard, as he strains noodles in the sink. It bounces off his back and he glances over his shoulder. “Be glad that wasn’t a bullet!” 

 

“Always am. Hungry?” 

 

“How’d you know?” She grumbles, half convinced that he has some way to monitor when she’s not eating enough or works too hard. 

 

“Figured you would be,” he doesn’t give her any more clues than that so she grabs plates and glasses while Frank sets the garlic bread on the little table and she lays out their places as he mixes the noodles in a creamy sauce with vegetables. 

 

“Where the fuck did you learn to cook?” She has dozen questions, but this one seems the most pressing as he grabs parmesan cheese from her fridge and shuts it with his foot. “Wait. Did you buy me groceries?” 

 

“When I was 26 and yeah,” he tells her, glancing up as he spoons pasta onto her plate. “You don’t have shit here, you know that?” 

 

“I eat a lot of take out,” she says defensively and he chuckles before sitting down. All Karen can do is stare across at him, in shock. 

 

He looks good. There’s still a mottled bruise across one cheek bone that in the process of healing, and there’s a collection of new scars that he’ll carry, but for once, he’s not actively bleeding. His dark eyes aren’t wide with pain and some other emotion that she can’t linger on because if she does, she’s scared she’ll never come back from it. He looks…. Calm. 

 

“Been busy, huh?” He drawls, twisting some pasta around his fork, then depositing it on his garlic bread and taking a bite. 

 

“Been watching me?” Karen replies, taking a bite of her own and stopping in surprise when she realizes just how good it is. Frank doesn’t say anything, just watches her as he eats and Karen thinks of her visits and trips across the city. She decides it might be best to keep her mouth shut in this case. 

 

She’s halfway through the plate when she decides, with trepidation, that this is what one might call a date, of all things. Except Frank Castle does not date. It’s not a date, it’s an apology, that has to be it. The unspoken sorry for everything that’s happened. So despite the fact that it’s not even 4:30 in the afternoon, Karen rises and goes to get them a beer. An apology of her own.

 

“Thanks,” Frank grunts when she sets his before him. Karen sits back down across from him and eats her pasta, unsure of where they go now. Then she opens her mouth. 

 

“I thought about, uh, buying you flowers. For your window. So that if you ever needed anything from me, I could, you know…. Reach out,” she says quietly and Frank chuckles. 

 

“How about a cell phone, huh? That work?” 

 

“I don’t know,” a smile threatens Karen’s lips. “I like old school.” 

 

“Technology might have it’s moments,” Frank has a little half smile as he fishes his phone out of his pocket and slides it across the table. When Karen reaches for it, their fingers brush and she feels like it’s a volt of electricity beneath her skin. 

 

She enters her phone number under the name **Ma’am** so that even if he’s done being the Punisher, should anyone ever take his phone, she wouldn’t be so easy to figure out. When she hands it back over, he sees the contact name and huffs, a bit of a smile. 

 

“I’m keeping the roses though,” she tells him, scraping the last bit of pasta up with her garlic bread and his eyes are thoughtful as he looks at her. 

 

“Yeah?” 

 

“Mhmm.” 

 

“You like roses?” 

 

“I….” Karen hesitates for a long second, recalling a long ago angry girl, who stood amongst roses, so many roses, and didn’t weep. They’d been red as blood, those roses, and the smell had lingered with her until she’d stepped into New York. “I guess.”

 

“What’s your favorite flower?” Frank asks her, leaning back. Karen gets up to take both their plates, needing something to keep her hands busy. 

 

“I, uh, don’t have one,” she declares and Frank scoffs. 

 

“Bullshit.”

 

“What’s yours?” Karen shoots, rinsing the plates off and opening her dishwasher. Frank follows her, holding their glasses. 

 

“Peonies,” he tells her with just a flicker of sadness and Karen knows even without him saying anything. _Maria._

 

“Well, I guess if I had to like anything it’d be….” She thinks about a sweet old lady who’d sang to her and brushed her hair back. “Daisies.” 

 

“Daisies?” Frank moves behind her to put their glasses in the dishwasher and it makes every hair on Karen’s body rise. 

 

“Yeah, they’re….” Karen trails off, unable to stop the memories of sunlight filtering down through a window and wrinkled, tanned old hands in soapy dish water. Bits of foam flicked at her, laughter, joy…. “They’re simple.” 

 

“Alright,” he accepts easily and they finish cleaning up the rest of the kitchen mostly in silence, until Karen takes a deep breath and then turns to him. 

 

“Are you….” She starts to ask before catching herself. Her next word was going to be okay, alright, fine. All of which seem so hollow. He is still alive, without his wife, his children. Who would ever be okay, alright, fine after such a thing? It seems idiotic. So instead she takes a deep breath and says, “I’m glad you came.” 

 

“Yeah, well,” Frank ducks his head and without her heels, Karen is level with him. She can’t help but fixate on the little bit of scruff creeping up his neck and jaw; she remembers the thick, bushy beard with a fond, faint smile. He’d looked so different as a hipster; that was Pete. The shaved head and smooth cheeks were the Punisher and she knows the distinction better than anyone. But who is he when he’s someone in-between? 

 

“I didn’t want to rush,” Karen says quietly, there in her kitchen and she’s not sure what she means. Rush him. Rush them. Rush this, rush a moment, rush anything at all. She reminds herself of a cautious little girl, about to take the first step out on the ice for the first time in the Vermont winters. 

 

“I know,” Frank replies, just as quiet and there is no air, there is just them, inches apart. For the span of a breath Karen thinks about sunshine and laughter and wine glasses left behind for the company of tangled sheets and sighs. Then a car honks, stories below them, and she is jolted back to where she belongs. The now. 

 

“I, uh…. I didn’t want to….” Her words are ugly, and never enough. She knows how silly it seems; in the face of death, in the face of danger she never loses her mouth, her edge. She’s not unsure in those moments, rather she is the most sure that she’s ever been. It’s when she’s lost in the softness, in the what might be, that she worries one mistake and she’ll ruin it all. 

 

“To pry, I know,” he takes a step away from her and it’s both relief and dismay, because when he’s close she can’t breathe but she’s never been so alive. “Curt told me; David too.” 

 

“I bet they did,” Karen shakes her head, smiling to think about two grown men whispering about a girl and her crush. She knows that’s no where near to how it happen, but it amuses her to think of it that way. 

 

“Why didn’t you, uh, stay?” He asks, reaching his hand up to scratch the back of his head, looking away like he’s a little sheepish and Karen has to drag her eyes away from the little sliver of skin that shows his hip bone and a bit more. 

 

“Stay when?” She wonders if he’s referring to the elevator. If he holds a grudge that she didn’t run with him then. She would’ve but to what end? How would that have helped him in the long run? 

 

“The night, before the meeting. When you went to Curt.” 

 

“Oh,” Karen stops herself in confusion, blinking several times and trying to figure out how to explain to him that she wasn’t going to be the one to take the first step. That it always had to be him. “Didn’t know if you were ready.” 

 

“Ready?” Frank folds his arms and leans against the counter. She fights to not think about his hips, as tantalizing as they may be. 

 

“Yeah,” she waves an aimless hand, trying to pluck the right words from the air itself. “If you wanted to see me. If I’d be intruding. If you were going to need more time.” 

 

“Ever thought that maybe I didn’t want you seeing my ugly mug all banged up?” He has this way of smiling without it being a smile, all curved lips and squinty eyes, the bridge of his nose scrunching up. She likes the way he looks away when he smiles, like he can’t quite share them with her yet, but they’re getting there. 

 

“Do I need to remind you what you looked like in the diner?” Karen comments back and Frank laughs, just a short little exhale of breath, but it is enough. It is bantering and Karen has never missed anything more in her entire life. 

 

“Okay, fair,” he admits, turning to look back her. “Guess you’ve seen me at my worst.” 

 

“I don’t think that’s your worst, just not your best,” she says softly and the whole atmosphere changes, like a storm front rolling in unexpectedly. Dark eyes, black like the midnight sky, look down at her and she remembers a night of terror and devastation. Remembers a man who had talked about Frank and his ability to see into the very soul of someone. She feels that weight now. 

 

“Yeah? What’s my worst then? What’s my best?” Frank folds his arms, taking just a half step closer to her. Part of her is wondering if this is what the Punisher does to those he wishes to scare, while the other part of her wants nothing more than to close the gap completely and wrap herself up in him.

 

“Your best is this pasta,” Karen turns away from the moment, away from how she fears she’s going to answer. What is Frank Castle’s best? What is his worst? She’s not sure she’s seen either. 

 

“Should see me on a grill,” he remarks and Karen hides a smile. 

 

“Yeah, well, maybe one day,” she speaks it with just the faintest bit of hope. That maybe there will be that sort of day, when they plan for the future. When it’s assumed that they will get to see each other without the pain of death and the stink of fear ruining every fragile breath they take. 

 

“I really do appreciate it, you know,” Frank takes a step closer and it has effectively boxed Karen into a corner. Any way out would mean brushing up against him and she’s not sure she’s ready for that. She knows that her own body will betray her and reach for him again. “Giving me, uh, time.” 

 

“It’s the least I could do, after….” She trails off and looks up at him. The words aren’t needed. They’re both thinking of Lewis, of that awful day. Karen still dreams of it some nights, wakes up in a cold sweat that it ends differently. That Frank doesn’t leap in front of her and Ori, that some over zealous cop shoots Lewis with the bomb still strapped to him, that she doesn’t pull Frank away from the steel door. 

 

“You, uh, wanna talk about it?” He asks carefully, almost a little sheepishly, and Karen can’t hide her surprise. He reads it so clearly in her face he gives a chuckle, eyes dropping off while he scratches his forearm. “Curt’s thing, you know? Talking and stuff. It…. Helps, a little.” 

 

“Another beer?” Karen offers or requests, she’s not sure. Frank relaxes marginally and nods. 

 

“Yeah, yeah, that’d be good.” 

 

“Okay,” Karen ducks past him and opens the fridge, grabbing two more and wondering if it wouldn’t be more prudent to grab the whiskey instead. Frank takes his and follows her to the couch, where they sit not too close to each other, but Karen can still feel his heat, see every little detail of his face. 

 

“Thanks for not, uh, calling me a terrorist after it,” he starts with an attempt at a joke, but Karen can only shake her head. She remembers Detective Mahoney’s words, remembers Ellison’s outrage and astonishment, remembers Foggy’s disbelief. 

 

“I just thought it was rich of Senator Ori to try and spin that he’d been the hero after he, he,” she breaks off in anger, still able to feel the way he’d pushed her at Lewis, trying to save himself. 

 

“Hey—” Frank reaches out and takes her hand, his dark eyes on hers, soft and warm. She looks up into them, thinking with dark humor that this is might be one of the few times she’s seen him without bruises ringing them. “Hey, anyone who was in the building that day knows he was a coward and worse, okay? Everyone knows that you were a goddamn hero. He’d be dead if it hadn’t been for you.” 

 

“And I’d be dead if it hadn’t been for you,” she whispers and that’s all it takes. Karen Page is a strong woman, who deals with her traumas with a stiff upper lip and slim shoulders well adept at carrying the weight of the world. But there is something about the eyes of Frank Castle, dark and kind, how his hands are rough but warm, how he smells like safety and security, that makes her crumble. 

 

“Hey, hey, hey, hey,” Frank sees her tears and his instant reaction is to pull her closer to him, to slide his fingers through her silky hair and cup the base of her skull. She collapses forward and it’s him that catches her, bringing her close. 

 

The nook between his neck and collarbone seems to have been made just for her. Her arms wind around his back as she remembers the what might have been, the chance she would’ve walked out of there without him. She’s been without Frank more than she’s ever been with him, by leaps and bounds, but this time had hurt worse than all the others. This time he’d given her hope. 

 

“Sorry,” she’s muttering, but Frank keeps shushing her, the little noises that he makes when he’s trying to comfort her and it only makes her cry all the harder. Something about it is so real, so innocent from him, how after everything, he wants to soothe her, that she can’t quite process.

 

Frank rubs her back, and Karen feels so guilty that she’s the one sobbing when she had had every plan on giving him comfort. How did it all get so turned around? For all her intents and purposes, she’s still the one crying, lost in the fear of what just might have been.

 

She’d seen him being beaten to death. Not in an overly dramatic way. Not like how Foggy might say it, angry with Matt and waving his arms around. She had seen Frank survive by the smallest margin possible; the man takes a bullet to the head, fists to the face, stab wounds and cuts and broken bones, and yet somehow he’s still the one sitting her before her, hands threaded through her hair and his soft voice in her ear, comforting her.

 

“Hey, hey, _it’s okay_. It’s okay Karen, it’s okay. Shh, shh, shh, shh….”

 

“I’m sorry,” she repeats again when she leans away from him. “It’s just…. It’s really good to see you.”

 

“Yeah, you too,” his voice is soft and he looks at her, so earnest, so careful. Searching like he’s the one who’s overstepped. Karen gives him a wavering smile and reaches up so that she can rest a hand on his cheek. The bruised one, of course. She thinks about how Curtis had broken Frank into two men, one who loved Maria and one who lost her. Would she have loved the man he was before this? Does it even matter, when she knows that she loves the man he is now?

 

The realization doesn’t scare her as much as she thought it might. Part of her knows that she’s known it since she saw him on that roof with the skull across his chest. She’d been so angry with him, for the night that he’d hit her with a truck, and even more so for the door he slammed shut on her. She’d threatened him with the only thing she had – herself.

 

_“You do this, you’re dead to me!”_

_“I’m already dead.”_

 

Except that statement has rang true over and over again, yet despite it, here they sit. Karen has forgiven him and hated him and forgiven him. Love is unconditional. Love is unwavering. Love is unruly and uncomfortable. Love simply is, defying explanation. And so is he.

 

“I, uh, I….” She trails off, takes a deep breath, centers herself, centers her focus on him. “How are you? Is there anything that I can do?”

 

“Nah, I’m alright,” he tells her, and they separate again. Karen can reach him, it seems, but she cannot keep him and she thinks that somehow that hurts even worse. “I’ve just been readjusting, I guess.”

 

“I’m glad,” she says quietly, thinking of him at group with Curtis. She wonders if he shares some of the pain. She hates herself for being jealous that others are getting to see a part of him that he once allowed her to glimpse. As soon as she has the thought, she dismisses it. She’s grateful for anything that helps him with his pain.

 

“Got a, uh, little place,” he offers up and Karen’s heart stops at the idea of him in a little apartment, with a small bed and narrow kitchen. “Yeah, working on fixing it up. Who knows, might flip it and sell it for a profit. Maybe I’m the next real estate mogul.”

 

“Wouldn’t surprise me,” Karen chuckles. “Handyman Frank.”

 

“Yeah, that’s me,” he mutters, subdued and silence falls quickly, rushing in to fill the space between them, a heavy blanket.

 

“Oh shit,” Karen jumps when her phone goes off and they both look at it in surprise. Karen leaps off the couch and snatches it up, cursing slightly when she sees Foggy’s face.

 

“You need me to go?” Frank is already on his feet, moving towards the door. Karen’s heart sinks, thinking about how he wants to leave, get out of her hair. He probably didn’t even want to come in the first place, forced into it by Curtis and David so that she’d leave them alone.

 

“No, I—” Karen looks down at the phone, then dismisses the call. Whatever it is that has Foggy yelling, it can wait. Frank is more important. “It’s just Foggy.”

 

“What’s he need?” Frank stops, hands in his pockets and Karen sets the phone down, running her fingers through her hair.

 

“Not sure,” she admits. “Lately, it’s just a lot of calls about his new girlfriend, his new jobs, and all of his worries. It’s easier to just take him to lunch and let it all out there.”

 

“I, uh….” He doesn’t say anything else, both of them staring at each other. Karen hugs her arms, nails digging into her skin to stop from reaching for him. There’s something that needs to be said between the two of them, she’s just not sure what it is. She’s not sure if it’s an apology or a promise or a fight. She just knows that the longer it goes unsaid, the more uncomfortable they both get.

 

“I don’t want you to go,” she blurts out and then stops, apprehensive. She’s not sure if that’s what she should say to start this conversation, but it’s what’s on her heart and her mind. It’s her truth. She doesn’t want him to go, not from her apartment right now or ever. She doesn’t want him to go back to vengeance and danger. She doesn’t want him to go back to his empty room, with those memories. She doesn’t want him to go. She wants him here.

 

“I can, uh, stay,” he looks back at the couch. “Better fix the window, you know. Don’t want anyone gettin’ in.”

 

“Like you?” Karen smiles slightly and he ducks his head with a chuckle.

 

“Yeah, like me. Got any tools?”

 

“Sure,” she answers, thinking that he can fix the window but what they really need to fix is them. She gets the toolkit from the closet by the door and offers it to him. He smiles as he takes it and goes to the window. Karen retreats to the bedroom to change and come up with a battle plan.

 

She takes a deep breath and looks at herself in the mirror as she pulls off her work clothes. What does she even want to say? That she loves him? That she wants there to be something between them? That she wants to spill all her secrets to him, one after the other, until he finally can see the person she is, laid bare in front of him? That she wants, desperately, more than anything, to at least know where they stand so she can stop being so terrified that one misstep is going to cost them everything that they’ve built?

 

She exhales hard, amused despite herself. That is madness. That is insanity. That is the surest way to make Frank run. But she’s not sure how the hell else to move them forward, stop them from languishing in this weird void. She’d imagined an after with him, begged and pleaded to gods she didn’t believe in for there to be an after at all. She’d bargained her life and soul to keep his here, but now she isn’t sure what the hell she is meant to do with it.

 

“Think this’ll do it,” Frank remarks, when she walks back out. He’s sitting on the window sill, and Karen mouth twitches up into a smile when she sees that he’s moved the flowers into a prominent place, directly in view from the street below.

 

“Guess this means you’ll just have to use the front door from here on out,” she jokes before stopping herself. Is that something that they’ll be doing then? Him visiting her, comfortable enough to use the door like a normal person? It occurs to her, in a grim sort of way, that normality seems so far out of their reach.

 

“Yeah, no breakin’ in. Curt tells me it’s rude,” he jokes back and Karen relaxes slightly, taking the toolkit from him when he offers it.

 

“I’m glad he’s alright too,” she tells him, thinking about what she’d heard from the news and other sources. She’d pieced together what must’ve really happened between Frank, Billy, and Curtis. “He’s a good guy.”

 

“Yeah, one of the best,” Frank looks uncomfortable again, like he doesn’t know what to do when he doesn’t have tools in his hands. Karen goes to get them another beer in hopes that will set them at ease. Idly, she wonders how many beers it takes to get Frank Castle drunk, before knowing that it’s more than two or three. At the last second, she changes her mind and reaches for the whiskey. The good stuff, at the back. A gift given to her by Foggy when she’d gotten her new job, with the caveat that she would have it the next time she wanted to celebrate.

 

“On the rocks or neat?” She asks Frank as she grabs two tumblers.

 

“Uh, neat,” Frank replies, eyebrows furrowing when he sees what she’s got planned. “But it’s, uh, not even 5:30 Karen.”

 

“I won’t tell if you don’t,” she promises and if he knows that she’s talking about more than the whiskey, he doesn’t give her any indication. She pours his neat and hers over the rocks, before bringing both and the bottle to the couch. Frank takes it with some muttered thanks and they sit, each silently nursing the drink. Karen watches the clock on the wall and promises herself that when it’s been five minutes, she’ll speak. Frank breaks it at three.

 

“Listen, Karen, I wanted to reach out to you, but stuff got… bad,” he admits and Karen is silent, even if she wants to yell that she knows. She knows how bad it got, she knows how close he came. But she stays quiet and she lets him talk it out. “I didn’t want you seeing me like that. Didn’t want you worrying over me.”

 

“Huh,” she snorts and he gives her an affronted look with just enough of a smile in his eyes that she knows he’s not mad about the interruption, not truly. “I’m always worrying over you, Frank.”

 

“Yeah, well, this time wasn’t like the others,” he tells her and Karen thinks about the others. The diner. The cabin. The courtroom. The elevator. “The men that came after me this time, they weren’t going to stop just cause some journalist with her cornflower blues and her .38 asked them to.”

 

“I wouldn’t have asked, I would’ve threatened,” Karen corrects with a little smile. That felt almost like a compliment.

 

“Even less effective,” Frank declares and Karen draws her knees to her chest, easing her toes under Frank’s leg. To her surprise, he lifts it so that she has less resistance before setting it down. “I didn’t want anyone coming after you, not those bastards. I was tryin’ to keep you safe, and then after, I dunno, I guess I.… Just wasn’t sure if you’d want me turnin’ up on your doorstep.”

 

“You didn’t turn up on my doorstep, you came in through the window,” Karen reminds him with a bit of a chuckle and Frank rewards her with a huff that could almost be called laughter.

 

“Yeah, definitely rude as hell,” he mutters and Karen reaches across the gap to touch his shoulder. He looks at her hand then at her with a little bewildered expression, a crease appearing between his soulful eyes. Karen’s lips draw upward in a sad smile despite herself. He deserves a compassionate touch. He deserves everything, and she wishes she could be the one to give it to him.

 

“I don’t mind. I’m just glad you’re alright. For a second, I thought….” She trails off, unable to voice what exactly she had thought. First that he was dead. That he wasn’t going to come back. Then that he’d escaped, ran for some island or non-extradition country where she could never follow. Then the worst reality had set in, the chance that he didn’t want to see her. That everything that had passed in these months had been nothing more than a figment of her imagination.

 

“Thought what?” He presses her gently and Karen’s hand slips off his shoulder.

 

“Thought that you might not want to, not anymore,” she mutters quietly and he is quiet for a long moment. Then he jerks forward, startling her, catching her chin in one hand. She stares into his eyes, and sees something in them, something that is full of pain and longing.

 

“Hey, listen to me,” he says urgently. “Listen Karen. First thing I wanted to do when I woke up was make sure you were okay, you got that? But you know that the men that came after me, they were higher ups. I had no clue what they knew. If I would’ve raced to your side without makin’ sure that things were clear, I might’ve—” He stops himself, but Karen’s heart is in her throat. She imagines what else he might say.

 

_I might’ve put you in more danger. I might’ve hurt you. I might’ve showed them how much I care about you. I might’ve showed them that you matter. I might’ve scared you, and maybe me too._

 

“I know, I know, that’s why I didn’t bother you,” she mummers, leaning closer to him because she can. Because he is here.

 

“You’re not a bother, Karen,” he says it with something between a smirk and a sigh, like he’s tried to tell her that again and again and she just refuses to listen. “But you didn’t deserve that worry, and I’m sorry. I’m not gonna be botherin’ you anymore.”

 

“Wait, what?” Karen pulls back abruptly and he lets her go. That sounds like a goodbye. She’d thought this was an apology, even a step forward. Not a goodbye. He looks at her, uncomfortable, and Karen’s skin has gone cold despite the warmth in her apartment. “Where are you going?”

 

“You don’t need me fuckin’ up your life, Karen,” he responds like it should be obvious and she is filled with a mixture of rage and relief, because how dare he think that he’s a burden, but if he intends to stay, then she can show him just how wrong he is. “Be best if I just left you alone.”

 

“You tell Curtis that?” She leans back, folding her arms and giving him a deadly look. “David? Last time I checked, they’ve gotten into just as much shit as me. So what’s the difference Frank? I can’t handle this because I’m a girl?”

 

“Are you really making this a feminist thing?” Frank gives her an astonished look. “Really?”

 

“Is it?” Karen juts her chin out defensively. “I think it might be. I can defend myself Frank.”

 

“Not from them you can’t!” His voice rises, sharp and furious. He is angry, she can tell, but she’d rather have him angry and in her apartment than calm and far away. “Karen, what don’t you get that the only thing that’s important to me is making sure that you survive this? That you survive me?”

 

“You’re not something I have to survive Frank,” Karen protests in disbelief, wondering if that’s how he sees this. If he thinks that he is another storm in her already chaotic life, that he’s just a moment that she must shelter and come out from battered but alive. Nothing could be further from the truth, she thinks, but her mouth won’t say those words.

 

“That’s all I am, Karen,” he pushes back, running a hand over his growing hair. “I’m no good for anyone, you knew that.”

 

“Is that really what you think?” Karen glares at him. “You’re an absolute idiot Frank.”

 

“Would you listen to me?” Frank argues. “Karen, I came to make sure you were okay, you got that? But I can’t keep puttin’ you in danger!”

 

“What danger is there now?” Karen asks cuttingly, folding her arms and that stops Frank. He opens and closes his mouth several times, speechless, before looking away from her. A muscle in his jaw jumps, but Karen doesn’t say anything until he turns back to her.

 

“I am the Punisher,” he states, slowly and carefully. “You think that people wouldn’t kill you for the chance to hurt me? You don’t think that me being anywhere near doesn’t put you in the fuckin’ sights of criminals and worse?”

 

“I can get myself in those sights just fine,” Karen says icily.

 

“Yeah, and what happens when some man comes after you, tries to kill you?” Frank demands and Karen’s spine is ramrod straight when she answers,

 

“What makes you think I can’t kill him first?”

 

“I….” Frank trails off, his brow furrowed in confusion. “What?”

 

“Won’t be the first. Might not even be the last,” Karen keeps on her roll, clasping her hands in front of her and hanging on tightly so that he won’t see how they shake. “But if this is some bullshit way of pushing me out of your life because you don’t want me in it, fine. But be enough of a good person to tell me straight up that you’d rather never see me again than patronizing me and saying it’s for my own good. I know what’s good for me Frank, and I know what’s dangerous. But I’m not scared of looking at danger, I’m not scared of it. Don’t treat me like I’m something fragile.”

 

“You’re not fragile,” Frank’s shoulders droop slightly and he drops his desperate gaze down. Karen breathes again, just a tiny intake of air. It’s so hard to function when he looks at her like that. “You’re one of the strongest people I know Karen. But it’s just that if anything fuckin’ happens to you, I, I, I,”

 

“Who says something is going to happen to me?” Karen points out and Frank gives her an incredulous look.

 

“Madani got shot in the head, Curt got shot, David had to pretend to die in front of his family, what the fuck do you think happens to people around me Karen? They die!” He bursts and Karen reaches for him, automatically, because that’s what they do. She reaches for him even during his worsts moments and he lets her. That’s their connection. That’s what makes them special.

 

_“You have everything, so hold onto it. Use two hands, and never let go. You got it?”_

 

“Frank, listen to me,” Karen’s fingers brush against his beard. It’s scratchy, but something about how real it is grounds her to this moment, keeps her from worrying about the future or regretting their past. All that matters is the now, and what she chooses to do with it. “Frank, I’m not scared.”

 

“Not scared, Karen what do you—”

 

“Shush, listen,” she orders and he’s quiet, avoiding her eyes with effort. She doesn’t try to draw them up; she just wants him to hear her for once. “I’m not scared of whatever it is you can tell me. I know Frank, I know. I know about your past, I know about your family, I know the why and the how and the everything. I know it Frank, I’ve looked it in the face and I am not scared, okay?

 

“I’m not scared if they come for me. I’m not scared of what they might threaten and what’s it’s going to be or what I might need to do. Because the only thing that I am scared of is never getting to see you, never getting to know if you’re alright or okay or hurt. I am scared that you’re going to disappear so far down in that hole that there’s never going to be a chance for you to come up for air.

 

“I am scared of things you don’t know, things that you can’t understand right now. But Frank, listen to me. I am not scared of you. I have never been scared of you. I was always safe, remember? I’m not scared of you or Lewis or Billy Russo or anyone else. I am terrified for you, I can promise you that. But never of you Frank, god, _never_.”

 

Frank is silent after her announcement. Karen stares at him, wondering if she’s really gone too far or if this has been just enough. She’s tried to explain to him what he means to her, to tell him how exactly she sees him. Why there’s no reason in the world for her to ever fear him. His eyes search her face, like he’s looking for a reason to not believe her. Karen stays quiet, not sure if she has anything left.

 

“I didn’t want to see you after,” he says suddenly. “I thought… I was sure… I guess maybe you wouldn’t want to see me. That I’d put you in too much danger.”

 

“Are you kidding me?” Karen holds his face tighter. “I’m the one who egged on a man with a gun and a bomb. I’m the one who called him a coward. I’m the one who brings them on, I’m the one—” Karen breaks off, gasping and Frank’s hand comes up to cradle the back of her head oh so carefully, oh so tenderly.

 

“But what if?” He whispers, with just enough heartbreak in his voice that Karen nearly sobs. What if she gets hurts because of him? What if he’s her cause of ruin? What if she joins Maria and Lisa and Frankie, what if she is yet another sin he must lay on his shoulders and carry?

 

“You’ve never been the harbinger of my doom, Frank Castle,” she mutters, thinking of roses and blood and how her voice had trembled when she pulled the trigger but her hands had been so very steady. “That’s always been me.”

 

“Karen, what….” He goes to ask the question she doesn’t want him to, the one she’s not ready for, before he stops and she thinks for a moment that she could tell it anyways. Just spill her ugly, bloody past out in front of them so that he could see once and for all how alike they are. “Karen, I just thought that you’d want to carry on. Forget about this. You could have a life, a real life.”

 

“This is my life,” her voice cracks on the last word. “This is my life Frank. I’m the one who was framed for murder, who Fisk came after, who Lewis sent his manifesto to. I would be in the shit even if it wasn’t for you. If anything, you…. Frank, you keep me safe.”

 

She thinks of all the times he’s saved her life. Some nights when she sleeps, she still sees Lewis in his mask, with his gun aimed at her and those crazed eyes. She’d stared down a barrel of a gun that day, and the bullet that had left it hadn’t torn through her brain; it’d hit Frank’s torso. Unbidden, one hand drifts that way, like she’s going to make sure that it hadn’t gone through his vest.  

 

“Karen what are you telling me?” He asked her, eyes urgent and prodding and hesitant all at once. He wants her answer and fears it, the same way that she wants and fears telling him in equal measures. She wants to be honest, but she’s not sure her heart is made for any more shattering. Not after Kevin, not after Matt, not for Frank. Not for her Frank.

 

“Two hands. Don’t let go,” she whispers and his face jerks into pain, the sort of earnest pain one must feel before it can get any better. Then Karen is pulled into his chest and he’s buried his face in her hair, one hand fisted up in it while the other drags across her lower back. Karen shifts so that her knee isn’t digging into his hip and ends up half in and half out of his lap, holding him closer to her.

 

She thinks he might be crying, but it also might be her. She is clutching his shirt, the soft fabric between her fingers, nose pressed hard to his shoulder. He smells like cheap deodorant and something muskier. She can feel his pulse thump in his neck, and she turns that way. She doesn’t mean for her lips to dart out and pressure the fluttering skin, but she can’t help it. It’s a way to reassure herself that he’s still there, living.

 

Frank makes a noise, halfway between a moan and a gasp. Karen would’ve pulled back, startled, except for the fact that Frank has tightened his grip and pulls her close. Karen tentatively, like doing anything more would shatter the delicate dance they’re doing, presses her lips a little more firmly to his skin and feels his pulse spike. The hand in her hair pulls slightly then releases.

 

Karen fears for a second that he means to push her away, but in a blink, she’s better settled on his lap. Frank’s hand goes to her own neck, holding it hesitantly like he wants to draw her closer but he’s not sure she’ll allow it. She responds by pressing her nose beneath his ear. Her lips give him tiny kisses where she can reach and Frank is shaking.

 

“Karen,” his voice cuts off brokenly and Karen pulls back so that she can see his face. He looks lost, absolutely lost. That same unsure, wild look he’d had in the elevator. Karen finds herself holding his face, trying to give him a moment of peace. That had been what he’d wanted last time, wasn’t it? A brief respite from all the destruction. Karen had just wanted to provide that to him. Give him something. Anything.

 

“I…. I just – are you alright?” She asks him quietly, unsure if this is too much for him. He gives a half laugh, something that sounds dark and humorless.

 

“Are you?” He turns the question back on her and Karen pauses, trying to understand why he’s asking. Of course, she’s alright. He’s here, he’s finally here, why on earth would she not be alright?

 

“Yeah, I am,” she answers firmly, believing it. She’s been not alright before. Frequently. But this isn’t one of those moments.

 

“I can’t….” Frank bows his head and Karen feels like she’s been doused in icy water. He can’t what, love her? Be with her? Her heart seizes up in the anger, the first throes of heartbreak making it hard to breathe. “I don’t want to hurt you Karen.”

 

“What does that mean?” She demands, so sick of hearing his excuses she wants to hit him. “Frank, god, if you don’t want me, then just fucking—”

 

“I do, that’s the thing!” He cuts her off loudly and Karen stops, staring at him. His eyes glare into hers. His brow is furrowed and his large hands have encased her upper arms. “Fuck Karen, do you even know how much I care about you?”

 

“Yes,” she whispers, thinking about all the bullets and bombs and hurt he’s spared her from. “But—”

 

“I care about you so goddamn much Karen, to the point where it fuckin’ scares the shit out of me, because that means I have to protect you,” he reminds her fiercely and Karen opens her mouth to protest that exact point.

 

“I told you, I can—”

 

“Shut up Karen,” he warns her and she snaps her jaw shut. “Listen, would you? Yeah, there’s people that are going to come after the big bad Punisher and you’re going to get in their way because you’re stubborn like that, I get it. But did you ever stop to think that maybe the person I need to protect you from the most is me?” He implores, looking at her with such honesty it makes her head spin.

 

“What?” She manages to splutter out. Frank would never hurt her, never. That has been the one constant since he chased her out of the hospital with a sawed-off shotgun.

 

“Karen, I am…” he struggles for the right words, still holding her on his lap. “I am fucked up. Bad. And it’s going to take more than tearin’ down walls with my bare hands and group therapy to make me better. In fact, I think my chances of a house in the suburbs is pretty much gone now. Can’t go back. I can’t be the man that I was before. I am always going to have these pieces of me that can’t fit back in. I am always going to be messed up. And I can’t ask you to fix that.”

 

“Fix what?” Karen is bewildered, because she’s never wanted to fix Frank. Comfort him. Give him solace. Give him safety and rest and love. But fixing him?

 

“Me. Fix me. That’s not for you to do Karen. And I… ma’am, I like you too fuckin’ much to put that bullshit on you. I respect you too much. You’re not a tool or a crutch. I gotta do it for me, I gotta make sure it’s for me and for my kids and for Maria and you….” Frank leans forward and touches their foreheads together, his voice cracking. “I want you, but it’s fuckin’ selfish of me. And frankly I’m not sure how you’d want me.”

 

“Frank, I—” Karen takes a deep breath, trying to figure out how to convince him why. She could tell him about her father. Her brother. Why she came to New York. Even about Matt. But she just leans forward and closes her eyes, breathing him in for this moment that she has him. “I just do. What do you want, Frank? What do you need?”

 

“Karen,” he whispers, hands sliding up her shoulders to her jaw, one thumb drifting over her lips softly. “Can it be you?”

 

“God, _yes_ ,” she nearly cracks but refrains, holding herself back. Just a moment longer.

 

Then Frank’s lips come up to meet hers and it’s all over.

 

The first pass is soft, gentle. Unsure. Like he thinks she might pull away. Like she might back off, break the delicate hold he has on her. But Karen has gotten a taste of bliss and she is not so scared as to not reach for more.

 

She deepens the kiss, reaching to throw one arm around Frank’s neck. Her hands reach for his hair, wanting to use it as a way to anchor her to him, but her nails only rake over his buzz cut. Frank moans, breaking their kiss for a second, before he crashes back harder than before. Karen’s whole body is trembling and Frank clasps her close.

 

She’s not sure how they end up horizontal on the couch, him above her, but all she knows is Frank’s whole body is pressed to hers. Her hands explore up his biceps and across his broad back, dragging her nails down his sides just to hear the way it makes him hiss and grip her waist. Karen is breathless, but she doesn’t want to pull away from him for even a second. He’s better than air.

 

Frank kisses like a man starved for affection for a long time, like he needs to have her, as much of her, as fast as he can. His hands rover from her head to her waist, once down to her ass before he snatches it back like he is afraid that she would chastise him. Instead she tilts her hips up and Frank groans, frantically clutching the couch.

 

Karen isn’t sure when she ends and Frank begins. Everything is a mix of them both, all little gasps and hands that hold just a bit too tightly. Like this moment is going to be taken from them. Disbelief that for just this once, there is no clear and present danger. No threat of impending separation. Karen almost thinks to wish that there was, so that she could rush things, but she won’t. Not with Frank.

 

He is the first one to lean back and Karen nearly cries out. She reaches for him automatically, needing to keep their tether, this cord of communion. He grabs her hands and holds them both over his heart, eyes twin pools of brown warmth. It fascinates Karen, that his eyes are so expressive, that he can communicate what he feels with nothing more than a look. Black in murderous, brown in softness.

 

“Do you….” He goes to ask her and Karen isn’t sure if it’s to see if she wants to stop or continue or something else entirely. But she doesn’t plan on finding out. She wiggles out from under him and sits up straight, smoothing out her messy hair and her clothes. She is not some 14-year-old girl anymore and a couch is not conducive to what she intends now. So she stands up and offers Frank her hand. He stares at it for a long moment before placing his hand in hers and lets her pull him towards her bedroom.

 

He is hesitant until he actually crosses into her space, seeing the bed with her iron bedframe. It was one of the few things she’d managed to salvage from her bullet filled last apartment. She is embarrassed, for a second, that some of her clothes are piled on the floor, forgotten in the quest for the laundry bin. There’s case files and notes strewn across her dresser and desk and part of the floor. She’d wanted to keep herself busy during her wait for him, but she’d had no time to clean up.

 

Frank doesn’t seem to notice. When she turns back to him, she nearly gasps when his hands go around her waist and he lifts her like she weighs nothing at all. A second later her back is pressed to the wall, legs around his hips, and his mouth crashing into hers. She thinks, in the faintest part of her brain still working, that the bed is so close, but so far. Then Frank’s tongue slips into her mouth and she forgets everything at all.

 

He tastes like the whiskey and Karen wants to laugh, thinking she's drunk on him and whiskey and everything that's happening. She is perfectly content here against her wall, except that she wants him, and badly. Her last relationship, Matt, had never gotten beyond some kisses and caresses, and she was single for quite some time before him. Besides, Matt had never kissed her like this. No one has ever kissed her like this. She presses her hips against Frank's, trying for any friction to ease the growing ache. He bites her lip, making her gasp. 

 

"Fuck," she mutters, dazed. He puts her down, arms still on either side of her, boxing her in. He hangs his head, breathing like he's ran a race. Karen reaches up to touch his cheek and he turns his face, kissing the palm of her hand softly. She kisses his cheek and when he turns his gaze back to her, Karen has no words to describe it, just the knowledge that everything is about to change. 

 

"You--" He starts to say but Karen cuts him off with another kiss, pushing him back towards her bed. Frank stumbles, trying not to break the kiss, before he pulls back and looks at her. 

 

"Yes," Karen tells him, trying to take away all his worries and fears and questions. "Yes, Frank, yes. Please." 

 

"Yes ma'am," he responds and Karen grabs the bottom of his shirt, yanking it up over his head. Frank obliges and when he's shirtless, she doesn't even try to hide her little sigh of appreciation. She's sure that later there will be sadness, when she sees all of the scars he carries. But right now all she sees is his chest, chiseled, and mostly importantly, rising and falling. She will never stop feeling gratitude just to see him living. 

 

Frank kisses her again and Karen's hands splay over his broad chest. He's tugging at the tee-shirt she'd pulled on, until it slips over her head and is discarded somewhere on the floor. She does her bra herself, sinking down on the bed. She expects Frank to come with her, but pauses when he doesn't, looking up at him with confusion and slightly dismay. He kisses her forehead, using one hand to push her back. Reluctantly she reclines, feet still on the floor, knees hanging over the side. Frank eyes her with raw need, but he doesn't go for his jeans. Instead, he asks the question silently, apparent in every hesitation and reserved movement. Karen reaches down and hooks the leggings she'd changed into with her thumbs, and begins to move them down. 

 

Frank takes that as his cue and his hands move to help, until they've also been tossed aside. Completely naked, Karen shivers, and Frank runs his hand up her side, lovingly. He dips to kiss her, long and languid. She trembles again but not from the cold or from fear. She wants him. Needs him. Something. Frank gently takes her chin and turns her head to the side, so that he can kiss her exactly where she kissed him. She reaches up for him, needing to steady herself. Frank turns his attention to her collarbone, biting every so lightly. 

 

"Frank," she groans, certain that she's fallen asleep in the library and she's going to wake up wanting and alone. She's sure it would be very embarrassing. Frank makes his little shushing noises, kissing down between her breasts, giving them both a loving nip, before he continues downward at the pace of a glacier. She scrambles for purchase on the bed, but Frank keeps her in place with one hand firmly on her hip and the other moving to spread her legs apart so that he can kneel between them. Karen throws her head back and forgets any sense she might have.

 

Frank is _magical_. That's the only way she can think to describe it. He is rough, like he is trying so hard to contain himself and is just barely holding himself back, but she doesn't care. If anything, it only makes it better, makes her want him even more. He is eager, taking note of what causes her to gasp and moan, applying pressure until he has her shaking, racing towards her edge with an intensity she wasn't even sure she could achieve. She tries to hold off, tries not to make it seem like she has been this desperate for him, but there's no chance. She comes with a scream she can't quite muffle and Frank can't keep her from jerking off the bed, back arched. Not once do his attentive ministrations waver, until she collapses back down, panting. 

 

Slowly he raises his head and Karen lifts hers as well, trying to see him. Trying to read the situation. If he's alright. If this is okay. If they've crossed a line from which there will be no coming back from. She reaches for him when she sees his eyes glimmer, grabs his hands and pulls him down to her. She has no clue how this is going to work, and where they might go from this. But she'd begged for an after. She means to have it with him. 

 

She undoes his pants and Frank kicks them off, laying back. Karen moves to hover over him, surprised that he doesn't want to be on top. Instead he has a vulnerable sort of look as he sinks down amidst her pillows and blankets, looking up at her with trust. She is in the position to break him but he trusts that she won't. Karen feels tears behind her eyes and she bends down to kiss him, least he think that it might be some form of regret of her end. He kisses her back, patient, but she can feel proof of his want between them, and so she pulls back, hand moving to stroke him. 

 

Frank's head rolls back immediately, eyes shutting as his head thuds between the bars of her headboard. Karen watches him as she slides her hand up and down his dick, noting how big her is. Not that it comes as a surprise to her, she thinks. She's spent time thinking about Frank Castle's cock, and this does not disappoint her in the slightest. She watches his eyelids flutter and his mouth open slightly, gasping. She waits until she actually can't contain herself for another moment, before she carefully guides him between her legs. After a brief second to situate, she sinks down. 

 

Frank's breath comes out of him in a hiss as his eyes fly open. He looks at her with the same sort of terrifying honesty, the kind that screams to her that this is as open as she will ever see him. This is as close as he will come to the man he once was. So she stays still and tries to soak in the moment, to be utterly present with him. His hands grab her rib cage, squeezing slightly. She shifts, just a little, trying to accommodate all of his length, and he gives something between a gasp and a chuckle. She bends forward to kiss him, to make sure that he's alright with this, when he urges her to move, just a little.

 

She raises her hips up before slowly lowering herself down again, along his smooth shaft and Frank grabs behind her head, anchoring her to him. She did it again, a little faster, trying to find a tempo that would work for the both of them, and Frank is whispering something, something that she has to strain to catch. When she does, she kisses him again. 

 

_"Please, please, please, please, please, please, please...."_

 

She moves faster, and when Frank's hands go to her hips to set the pace she lets him. This is something bigger than sex for either of them and in those moment, she just wants him to find release, to find a moment of bliss like he gave to her. It doesn't take long, with her on top, for his breathing to start becoming more and more erratic, for his grip to tighten, for him to utter a few curse words and arch, thrusting deep inside her. Karen cradles his head as he slowly relaxes, hushing and kissing him in equal measure. 

 

"Frank," she whispers and he drags her down to kiss her again, rolling her so that they are side by side amongst her pillows, looking down at her with eyes that are hazy with pleasure and swollen lips. 

 

"Karen," he says back, voice a little wavering. "Karen I don't know how any of this is going to work. But if you want it to, then.... Fuck, then I'm going to try." 

 

"Trust me when I say that's exactly what I want," Karen promises him, kissing him again and thinking that the other thing she wants is for them to not leave this bed, not for the rest of the day, not ever.

 

* * *

 

 She wakes slowly, so warm and comfy she drowsily hovers between sleep and waking for several long moments. The weight of her blankets cover her legs and hips, but no further than her stomach. Something else covers her chest, heavier and warmer. She cracks one eye, just slightly, and a small smile overtakes her.

 

Frank is asleep on her chest. One arm lays across her stomach protectively, curling under her. She can feel his fingers splayed on her lower back. His head is nestled just below her collarbone, the other hand disappearing beneath the pillows. His breath, slow and even, tickles her. She could count each scar on his back from this angle if she wanted to. She doesn’t move, content. She brings one hand up to trace the lines on Frank’s neck tenderly.

 

That small soft touch is just enough to make him shift, rolling off her slightly. He slumbers on, face relaxed in sleep. Karen can’t help but trace his nose, wondering how many times it’s been broken. She touches his eye lashes, thick and dark resting on his cheek bones. She lightly presses scar after scar, and hates that every single one has been what’s led him here to her.

 

She can hear her cell phone ringing in the other room, and her bladder is protesting her staying in bed, so she carefully eases herself out from the blankets and Frank, making sure that he stays asleep. When he doesn’t so much as twitch, she smiles and bends down, kissing his forehead gently. Then she pads on light feet to the living room, grabbing Frank’s shirt from where it’d been discarded last night and pulling it on over her head.

 

She’s missed a call from Foggy, so she goes to the bathroom and checks her other notifications before she calls him back. She dismisses all her news things. She doesn’t care if the whole world ends around them. She’s got Frank. She dials Foggy’s number as she tidies up the bathroom. He answers after the first ring, sounding rather irritable.

 

“There you are. I was starting to worry. You know I don’t like it when you don’t answer for a long time.”

 

“Sorry, Fog,” she replies, holding back a smile when she sees the faintest mark of a bruise on her collarbone from Frank. “I was distracted.”

 

“Yeah, well, given the circles we run in, you know how important it is we check in on each other,” Foggy orders and Karen pauses in the doorway to her bedroom, watching Frank start to wake up, stretching.

 

“Yeah, you’re right. I’m okay though. Fact, I’m great.”

 

“Well good. I wanted to tell you about some stuff I’ve found, some stuff I think you should dig into on—”

 

“Foggy?” Karen interrupts him. “Can we talk about this some other time?”

 

“I mean, sure,” Foggy’s tone because suspicious. “Why, what’s up?”

 

“Nothing,” Karen promises, grinning when Frank begins to sit up. His gaze finds her and a slow smile unfurls itself over his face, lazy and content. Karen’s heart swells. A moment of peace, that’s what this is. Come what may, but they have this moment. “Nothing, it’s just…. I don’t really feel like talking right now, okay? We can have this conversation some other time.”

 

“Fine, but I’m only free Wednesday but only for like an hour, and you’d have to bring lunch to me, unless we did Thursday for early drinks, but—”

 

“Foggy,” Karen says a little more forceful when Frank stands up, walking towards her in his naked glory. “We’ll talk later, okay? I have to go now.”

 

“He going to appreciate being hung up on?” Frank asks, nearly to her. Karen tosses the phone onto her dresser with hardly a second thought.

 

“Maybe not.”

 

“Tell him sorry later then,” Frank tells her, mouth enveloping hers and Karen doesn’t think of the conversations she’s going to have with Foggy. She just thinks of the ones she’s had with Frank, and the ones that have brought them to be here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DEEP IN THE KASTLE FEELS FRIENDS. WHERE'S SEASON 2??
> 
> Seriously I'm mostly new to this fandom, so shoot me a review, say hi, something, anything. I love this show, I love this pairing, and I love new ideas for them. 
> 
> Let me know what you thought??

**Author's Note:**

> Part two will be up likely next week. Still playing around with some Kastle one-shots and such before I find that long story I want to write, so check back in? If you have a prompt for these two, hit me with it. 
> 
> Seriously, tell me what you like, what works, what jumped out to you. Thanks for reading friends!


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